A Study for Infinite Aesthetic Expansion
Proposed installation
2012
Given the context of global societal change and reflection in which we currently find ourselves, 'Infinite Aesthetic Expansion' attempts to comment on the position of the artist and the individual within the private and public sphere.
The proposed installation will consist of a small bare room or passageway/hallway in which two large mirrors will be installed on directly opposing walls creating the aforementioned 'infinity mirror'. When someone enters the space they will be confronted by their own fragmented modular reflection stretching off in to the distance on either side.
This creates a situation in which the viewer may visualize the increasingly isolated position of the artist in society vis-á-vis a long line of predecessors on one side, and an audience so geographically and socially diverse that one seldom meets face to face. The viewer is situated at a juncture, turning problems of authority from the past in to imaginary solutions for the future. They themselves are the juncture, placing ultimate responsibility on the individual for any future innovation or change. The self referentiality of contemporary visual culture is also evoked by this confrontation with endless copies.
Gilles Deleuze's definition of the virtual is also relevant here. He saw the virtual as something that every object carries within it, which is neither it's reality nor merely what it could have been but rather what what it is imagined to be. Virtual is therefore taken to mean a potential state that could become actual. Virtual is not opposed to real but opposed to actual. The prototypical case is a reflection in a mirror, it is already there, whether I am there to see it or not.
Mirror representations are images of coherence, they make the world and our place as complete subjects within in it make sense. The mirror provides a source of feedback that allowing for a potentiality of the production of the idealised image.
Proposed installation
2012
Given the context of global societal change and reflection in which we currently find ourselves, 'Infinite Aesthetic Expansion' attempts to comment on the position of the artist and the individual within the private and public sphere.
The proposed installation will consist of a small bare room or passageway/hallway in which two large mirrors will be installed on directly opposing walls creating the aforementioned 'infinity mirror'. When someone enters the space they will be confronted by their own fragmented modular reflection stretching off in to the distance on either side.
This creates a situation in which the viewer may visualize the increasingly isolated position of the artist in society vis-á-vis a long line of predecessors on one side, and an audience so geographically and socially diverse that one seldom meets face to face. The viewer is situated at a juncture, turning problems of authority from the past in to imaginary solutions for the future. They themselves are the juncture, placing ultimate responsibility on the individual for any future innovation or change. The self referentiality of contemporary visual culture is also evoked by this confrontation with endless copies.
Gilles Deleuze's definition of the virtual is also relevant here. He saw the virtual as something that every object carries within it, which is neither it's reality nor merely what it could have been but rather what what it is imagined to be. Virtual is therefore taken to mean a potential state that could become actual. Virtual is not opposed to real but opposed to actual. The prototypical case is a reflection in a mirror, it is already there, whether I am there to see it or not.
Mirror representations are images of coherence, they make the world and our place as complete subjects within in it make sense. The mirror provides a source of feedback that allowing for a potentiality of the production of the idealised image.
